1. Hermann Graf was a German Luftwaffe World War II fighter ace.
59 Facts About Hermann Graf
1. 2.
Hermann Graf served on both the Eastern and Western Fronts.
3.
Hermann Graf was initially selected for transport aviation but was posted to Jagdgeschwader 51 in May 1939.
4.
Hermann Graf was then posted as a flight instructor stationed in Romania as part of a German military mission training Romanian pilots.
5.
Hermann Graf flew a few ground support missions in the closing days of the German invasion of Crete.
6.
Hermann Graf was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross after 45 victories on 24 January 1942.
7.
At the time of its presentation to Hermann Graf it was Germany's highest military decoration.
8.
Hermann Graf was appointed Geschwaderkommodore of Jagdgeschwader 11 and claimed his last and 212th aerial victory on 29 March 1944.
9.
Hermann Graf was severely injured during that encounter and, after a period of convalescence, became Geschwaderkommodore of Jagdgeschwader 52.
10.
Hermann Anton Graf was born on 24 October 1912 in Engen in what was then the Grand Duchy of Baden near Lake Constance and the border to Switzerland, the son of Wilhelm Graf, a farmer, and his wife Maria, nee Sailer.
11.
Hermann Graf was the third of three children, with two older brothers, Wilhelm Wilhelm and Josef Wilhelm.
12.
Hermann Graf's father fought in and survived World War I as an artillery soldier, being awarded the Iron Cross.
13.
Postwar, the Weimar Inflation crisis of 1923 wiped out virtually all the family savings, and as a result, from a very early age, Hermann Graf had to work.
14.
Hermann Graf started with his local football club DJK Engen and later became a goalkeeper at FC Hohen.
15.
Hermann Graf finished his Volksschule in 1926 at the age of thirteen.
16.
Hermann Graf saw his first aircraft when he was twelve years old.
17.
In 1935, after Adolf Hitler officially revoked the Treaty of Versailles, Hermann Graf applied for flight training in the newly created Luftwaffe.
18.
Hermann Graf was accepted for the Luftwaffes A-level pilot training school in Karlsruhe on 2 June 1936.
19.
Hermann Graf graduated to the B1 school in Ulm-Dornstadt on 4 October 1937.
20.
Hermann Graf subsequently completed his B2 training in Karlsruhe on 31 May 1938.
21.
On 31 May 1939, Hermann Graf passed officer-candidate training at Neubiberg.
22.
On 20 January 1940, his Gruppenkommandeur Hans-Heinrich Brustellin had Hermann Graf transferred to Erganzungs-Jagdgruppe Merseburg, which was a training unit for new fighter pilots to receive tactical instruction from pilots with combat experience.
23.
At Merseburg, Hermann Graf met and befriended two other pilot trainees, Alfred Grislawski and Heinrich Fullgrabe, with whom he would later spend much of his combat career.
24.
Hermann Graf even managed to play football when a Luftwaffe team played against Cyclope Bucharesti at the Bucharest Sports Arena before 30,000 spectators.
25.
The unit flew mostly ground attack and anti-shipping missions during the fortnight it was based there but Hermann Graf did not engage in any aerial combat.
26.
Hermann Graf's unit was moved forward to Taganrog to support the battle for Rostov.
27.
In heavy combat over and around the see-saw battle, Hermann Graf had doubled his score to 42 by the end of 1941, making him one of the Gruppe's leading pilots.
28.
The air conflict was intense and in the first two days, Hermann Graf shot down thirteen aircraft, which included his 100th victory.
29.
Hermann Graf became the seventh Luftwaffe pilot to achieve that milestone.
30.
Hermann Graf was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross on 17 May 1942 for achieving 104 victories.
31.
Hermann Graf's aircraft was routinely shot up by enemy pilots or anti-aircraft fire.
32.
Hermann Graf became the fifth member of the Wehrmacht to receive this award, which at that time had only been awarded to Luftwaffe personnel.
33.
Hermann Graf was able to meet the Germany national football team and went to several of their international matches.
34.
On 28 January 1943 Hermann Graf took command of Erganzungs-Jagdgruppe Ost based in occupied France.
35.
The main base was at St Jean d'Angely 70 miles north of Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast although Hermann Graf spent most of his time at the Toulouse-Blagnac Airport.
36.
Hermann Graf selected a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-5 aircraft for his personal use and lavishly decorated it.
37.
Hermann Graf transferred his old friends, Grislawski, Suss and Fullgrabe, from III.
38.
On 11 June 1943, Hermann Graf arrived at the Wiesbaden airfield to set up his new unit.
39.
Delivery of the aircraft was delayed but in the meantime, Hermann Graf was able to shoot down a Mosquito intruder.
40.
Hermann Graf invited Sepp Herberger, coach of Reich's football team, to Wiesbaden to train his team for a day.
41.
Hermann Graf requested Fritz Walter, who later captained the West German World Cup team of 1954.
42.
Hermann Graf was greatly annoyed that no enemy aircraft were shot down.
43.
On 15 August 1943, Hermann Graf's unit was officially named Jagdgeschwader 50.
44.
Hermann Graf shot down two of the four four-engined bombers claimed, even though he had to crash-land his aircraft.
45.
On 8 October 1943, Oberstleutnant Hans Philipp, the second pilot after Hermann Graf to reach 200 air victories, and Geschwaderkommodore of Jagdgeschwader 1, was killed in action.
46.
Hermann Graf accepted with the proviso that his Roten Jager football team went with him.
47.
Hermann Graf's return was celebrated with a welcome dinner at its headquarters in Krakow, southern Poland, on 20 September 1944.
48.
Hermann Graf disobeyed Seidemann's order for him and Erich Hartmann to fly to the British sector to avoid capture by the Soviets.
49.
Hermann Graf refused to abandon his ground-crew and fly with his pilots to join Seidemann in the alpine redoubt.
50.
Hermann Graf's unit was interned for over a week with more than 30,000 other disarmed soldiers in a primitive camp with minimal food and sanitation.
51.
When Hermann Graf was found not to be malleable for their purposes, the Soviet regime put him on trial for war-crimes.
52.
On 8 December 1945, Hermann Graf was moved to POW Camp No 27 in Krasnogorsk, Moscow.
53.
Hermann Graf's release was finally approved late in 1949 and he was transferred to Repatriation Camp No 69 near Frankfurt in East Germany on 25 December 1949.
54.
In 1971 Hermann Graf made his own statement to the newspaper, "Bild am Sonntag", saying that he, along with others including Hartmann, had briefly joined the BDO as a way to survive the psychological deprivation of the imprisonment.
55.
Hermann Graf did however, return to flying, joining the Zurich branch of the Swiss Aero Club in 1951.
56.
Hermann Graf married twice thereafter and his third wife, Helga Schrock, gave birth to a son, Hermann-Ulrich, in 1959, and a daughter, Birgit, in 1961.
57.
In 1965, Hermann Graf was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a condition that seemed to affect many former high-altitude flyers and which caused his health to slowly deteriorate.
58.
Hermann Graf died in his hometown of Engen on 4 November 1988.
59.
Hermann Graf claimed these aerial victories in 830 combat missions, 10 on the Western Front which included six four-engined-bombers and one Mosquito, and 202 on the Eastern Front.